Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections

A bribery indictment against an Atlanta contractor could affect the legislation to take over Hartsfield Jackson Airport by the state, according to the AJC.

The indictment of the politically-connected Lohrasb “Jeff” Jafari spells out the latest charges filed in the Department of Justice’s three-year investigation of Atlanta City Hall corruption, and officially names him as the person who allegedly paid bribes to the city’s former chief purchasing officer, Adam Smith.

Jafari is also accused of paying bribes in 2014 to an unnamed official in DeKalb County. Federal prosecutors last week issued a subpoena to the county seeking various documents related to county contracts and spending. It’s unclear if the the subpoena is related.

Jafari will fight the charges against him, according to defense attorney Steve Sadow, who provided The Atlanta Journal-Constitution with a statement Wednesday.

The indictment comes at a critical moment for the city-run airport. A planned vote is scheduled for Thursday in the Georgia Senate on a potential state takeover of the airport. Pak said the timing of Jafari’s indictment was coincidental.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said it’s staffing up in Georgia’s 6th and 7th congressional districts, a notably early investment as the party seeks to defend and expand upon gains made in the midterms.

The DCCC announced the upcoming hires Thursday as part of a new multi-million-dollar campaign called March Forward. The party said it plans to hire nearly 60 grassroots organizers to help build out its infrastructure in key areas across the country long before the 2020 elections.

The party declined to say how many organizers it plans to send to the north Atlanta suburbs, but its move to hire paid field staff represents the DCCC’s biggest on-the-ground investment in Georgia since the 6th District special election in 2017.

The committee has opened an investigation into alleged voter suppression tactics.

Fair Fight Georgia, a group launched by Democrat Stacey Abrams – who narrowly lost the 2018 gubernatorial election-is suing, seeking to overturn some state voting regulations. The group has said it is pleased with the launch of the congressional investigation.

“Democrats are bringing out their full arsenal of weapons to relitigate November’s election in preparation for an upcoming election,” [Congressman Doug] Collins said in his prepared statement. “Elections within the state of Georgia are just that – an issue to be addressed by state and local officials within our state. The fact that a U.S. congressional committee is inserting themselves into a statewide issue squarely outside of their jurisdiction exposes their purely political objectives.”

Collins went on to say that Democrats who claim voter suppression after losing elections is a growing trend.

a Georgia House committee approved legislation Wednesday to outlaw abortion after a fetus’ heartbeat can be detected, which is around the same time many women medically confirm they are pregnant.

Women in Georgia can currently seek an abortion up to 20 weeks of a pregnancy. A heartbeat is generally detectable by medical professionals at around 6 weeks.

The House Health and Human Services Committee approved the anti-abortion measure on a party-line vote of 17 to 14. Thirteen Republican men and four Republican women voted for it. Seven Democratic men and seven Democratic women voted against.

The committee approval means the bill could soon move to a vote before the full House, but timing is tight.

Thursday marks a Georgia legislative deadline by which bill must generally pass one house or the other. Any passage in the full House would send it to the Senate. Gov. Brian Kemp pledged during his recent campaign for governor to sign the “toughest abortion laws in the country”. Kemp’s campaign website says he supports “a ‘Heartbeat Bill’ that outlaws abortions after six weeks.”

The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Ed Setzler, told a House panel that the bill represented Georgians’ beliefs.

“I believe in the common sense of Georgians,” Setzler said. “They recognize that science tells us a living, distinct whole human being with a heartbeat living in the womb is worthy of protection.”

One amendment that did make it came at the personal behest to the committee by Cooper, who asked members to “trust” her. Over the objections of witnesses, the committee voted to preserve the ability of women to abort fetuses that doctors say are incompatible with life.

Cooper presented the image of a woman carrying an anencephalic fetus, whose malformed head leaves brain tissue simply hanging in a sac. For some women, being forced to carry that baby through visible late-term pregnancy “would literally put them under psychiatric care,” Cooper said.

The state House on Thursday will consider a somewhat trimmed-down version of its originally proposed overhaul of the state’s certificate-of-need (CON) laws. The highly anticipated vote on House Bill 198 is expected to be close, experts say.

CON regulates how health care facilities function in Georgia. A provider must get a “certificate of need” from the state to proceed with a major project, such as building or expanding a medical facility or changing what services are available to patients.

Leading hospital groups oppose a broad CON revamp, saying it would hurt existing hospitals, including those in rural Georgia. Proponents say it would spark competition, increase access to services, and reduce health care costs.

The Senate’s version of the CON overhaul has stalled without a committee vote. But the House bill is still alive, and a new version passed the House special committee on health care access on Friday.

The legislation also would provide more rules for the rural hospital tax credit program, which the latest proposal maintains at $60 million, rather than the original bill’s $100 million.

On a 7-5 vote in the Senate Ethics Committee, Republicans supported the bill to convert the state to a $150 million voting system that combines touchscreens and computer-printed ballots. Democrats opposed the measure, saying ballots bubbled in with a pen would be more secure from hacking and more accurately reflect voters’ choices.

The legislation was introduced Feb. 14, passed the state House last week and now is set for a vote in the full state Senate.

The legislation now ensures that voters will be able to review their printed ballots before they’re counted and requires audits of election results to be in place in time for the November 2020 presidential election.

The state House Agriculture and Consumer Affairs Committee took a second crack Wednesday at a bill that’s created a significant amount of political heat between localities and homebuilders. House Bill 302 would prevent a number of specifications localities currently have the ability to impose regarding the look of one- and two-family dwellings.

“The way I look at that, and the way the bill’s drawn now — we went back and made a couple of amendments,” said state Rep. Vance Smith, R-Pine Mountain and the bill’s lead sponsor. “We put zoning back just as it was in the very beginning. We’re not touching zoning, and never were touching zoning, we were just trying to clarify, but we put it back.”

“We also created the overlay districts, which you can go in and lay out that overlay district, have the people in that area of the overlay sign a petition — if you have 50 percent plus one, they do what they want to do in that district. We didn’t touch HOAs or historical.”

Committee Vice-Chairwoman Susan Holmes, R-Monticello, said she wanted local control, and worried that this legislation if enacted would have a detrimental effect on communities, especially rural ones.

“I’m just so disturbed by this, y’all,” Holmes said. “Having been in local government for 12 years, I have been there. I have been from a little city that was absolutely pitiful and dying and dreadful looking, to having those guidelines which were very reasonable, that our local government voted for. See, it makes such a difference in my little city of Monticello, and I’ve also seen what has happened in Madison, Thomasville, Gainesville — cities around the state — Jackson. Cities in my area are just so upset by this, I just get calls and texts and emails about, ‘Please don’t let this bill pass.’”

The bill passed by a vote of 9-7 and moves on to the House Rules Committee. Today is the crossover deadline, however, and it was not on the initial Rules calendar. There is a Rules meeting at 9 a.m. and supplemental Rules calendars can be expected. If H.B. 302 does not pass the chamber today, it will not have the possibility of moving again until next year.

Jones fears his name may have cost McIntosh County a $400,000 allocation for a new visitors center.

Late in February, Jones joined nine other House members in urging Speaker David Ralston to resign after the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Ralston, a lawyer, had used his legislative position to stall court actions in cases involving his clients.

Jones believed he had secured a $400,000 special allocation to help McIntosh County remodel a former restaurant into a visitor center in the southwest corner of Exit 49 off Interstate 95. Since he joined the resolution addressing Ralston’s court delays, he has heard no more about his request for the money.

Jones asked for $750,000 and believes there was $400,000 in the budget for the project. He acknowledged Monday night, he can’t say for certain whether the funding was approved before he signed onto the resolution Feb. 28 calling for Ralston to vacate his seat.

Had the sponsor of the resolution on Ralston waited until after Crossover Day, the McIntosh County funding measure would already have passed safely from the House to the Senate. Crossover Day is the point in the legislative session when bills and resolutions must be approved in one chamber to give the other time to act. The Georgia General Assembly has not yet hit that date.

Spending would increase by just over $2 million but the local property tax rate would remain the same under the first draft of a fiscal year 2020 Dalton Public Schools budget the board of education recently reviewed.

Chief Financial Office Theresa Perry said the “predominate factor” in that increase is a permanent $3,000 a year pay increase for teachers proposed by Gov. Brian Kemp. The budget passed by the state House of Representatives last week lowered that pay raise to $2,775 but also expanded it to school counselors and other staff certified by the state.

The school system budget draft anticipates that salaries would increase to $46.613 million from $44.961 million. But Perry says the majority of that increase should be covered by additional state funding.

“It isn’t completely clear how much they will be funding, but based on the information I have, I expect it will be about 70 percent,” she said.

The Corps meeting was part of a 60-day comment period that ends April 16 on the agency’s draft recommendation to replace the lock and dam with a rock weir allowing fish passage but would lower the average pool in the Savannah River at Augusta and North Augusta, as a Corps simulation in February dramatically showed.

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